


In General Agreement

by rsadelle



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: F/M, Kidnapping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-28 13:20:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7642120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rsadelle/pseuds/rsadelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was really only a matter of time before Eve's position as M's assistant got her kidnapped. The surprising part is that she's been there for hours and no one's tried to get her to reveal information, either by asking or by applying force.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In General Agreement

**Author's Note:**

> I made up everything about Eve's boyfriend except his existence.

Graham texts Eve from the street an hour after he was supposed to show up. She buzzes him into the building and unlocks the door to her flat.

"You're late."

"Yes, I know. I'm sorry." Graham cups her cheek in his hand and leans in to kiss her. He stays close, forehead pressed to hers. "It was a shit day."

"Oh?" Eve steps back and waits.

"It's the merger. It's a nightmare." Graham steps back and loosens his tie. He drapes his coat over the arm of the sofa, and then his tie. "They're trying to take my best data analyst and shift her to their IT department. It's been a day full of trying to find a polite way to say fuck off."

"Sounds like my job," Eve says. "All the changes in my office, and I'm forever listening to my boss do the same thing. And then doing it for him when they want to schedule a meeting." Also, that thing with Denbigh, but she doesn't tell Graham about that one.

Graham drapes his arms over her shoulders. "Care to engage in some impolite agreement?"

The activity they engage in might even be called rude, and Eve says yes rather a lot. She sends Graham out to pick up takeaway after, and it turns out to be a lovely evening.

*

It was really only a matter of time before Eve's position as M's assistant got her kidnapped. The surprising part is that she's been there for hours and no one's tried to get her to reveal information, either by asking or by applying force. They do take a photo of her holding today's Times.

There are three men, only one in the room with her. She's handcuffed to a chair, but that's not an unsolvable problem. She can't see any cameras, but that doesn't mean they're not there. For now, she's going along docilely. She'll have a better chance of escaping if she knows what she's up against.

"Excuse me," Eve says when it seems like they're just waiting for whatever they're waiting for. "I need to use the loo."

The man in the room with her steps outside, leaving the door open, to have a low-voiced conversation with the other two men. They decide to allow her the loo, and Eve lets them uncuff her and recuff her hands in front of her.

They take her down a hall - no visible cameras here either, but it gives her a better sense of the building - to a loo with nothing she can use as a weapon. The one man staying in the room cuffs her to the chair again after.

There's something off about the whole thing. The men holding her are being careful, but not careful enough, not for kidnapping someone from MI6.

The room isn't soundproofed, and she can hear the voices when more people arrive. Four men appear in the doorway, three more kidnappers with weapons, and Graham.

Graham steps forward and is jerked back by the man holding him. "Eve, I'm so sorry. This is all my fault."

Eve narrows her eyes at him. "Is that so?"

The kidnappers don't seem bothered by them talking. They march Graham over to another chair - out of reach of Eve's - and handcuff him to it.

"They wanted me." Graham looks thoroughly stricken. Corporate espionage must be a bigger problem than Eve has ever guessed.

"He must really love you," one of the men says. "He came right along once we showed him proof we had you." So that's what the photo was for.

"I'm so sorry," Graham says again.

Eve thinks that the men who kidnapped them are going to be rather more sorry than Graham, but she also thinks it best not to say that.

"Just cooperate with us," one of the men, not one of the ones involved in the actual handcuffing, says, "and everything will be just fine." That's obviously a lie; none of the men are wearing masks.

Graham doesn't know she works for MI6, and he's a research scientist, so clearly it's up to her to get them out of this. It's been long enough that someone has to have noticed she's missing, but it could still take them a while to figure out where she is. She's going to have to do something soon, before they get Graham to do whatever it is they want him for.

They leave only one of the men in the room with them, which is an oversight on their part. Eve waits a bit, to see if that's going to change. When it's been an hour - every time Graham tries to talk to her, the man in the room tells him to shut up - Eve says, "I need to use the loo."

The man grumbles, but he comes over without consulting with the other men. He's smart about uncuffing her from the chair, at least, and he only does one hand at a time. When both her hands are cuffed together in front of her, before the man can turn away to lead her out of the room, Eve swings her arms up, fists bunched together, and strikes directly at his windpipe. He can't get the air to cry an alarm before she swings her arms again and knocks him out.

Eve says, "Quiet," to Graham before he can react.

Eve keeps one eye on the door - there's always a chance someone will come in anyway - while she fishes the handcuff key out of the man's pocket. A quick twist of her wrists, and she uses her cuffs to cuff the unconscious man's hands together. She pats him down quickly. His sheathed knife gets tucked into her bra strap and she keeps the gun in her hand. Only then does she go over to Graham. She stops watching the door for a moment to look him in the eyes.

"I am going to get us out of this," she says, quiet so they won't be heard from outside the room. His cuffs come off easily, and she catches them before they can fall to the ground and make noise. "Stay behind me and do as I say."

Graham nods at her, but his eyes are wide, and Eve takes a moment, after a glance at the door, to kiss him soundly.

There's a window in the door that no one's been looking through. Eve sidles up to it and looks out. There are still four men she can see, which leaves two unaccounted for. She'll have to hope they're not just out of sight of the door.

Eve takes a breath, two, flexes her fingers around the hilt of the knife and the butt of the gun. She opens the door, the speed the man with them would if he were coming out of it. She shoots the man looking in her direction first, and one more before the others get their guns pointed in her direction.

The door opens in, wrong angle to use it as a shield, but Eve ducks back into the room anyway.

There's gunfire, from the two men outside, and from farther away.

Eve takes a breath, steps half into the doorway on her exhale and pulls the trigger. She ducks into the room again and can hear the ricochet that means she didn't hit either of the men. She swears under her breath, and readies herself to try again.

There are gunshots before she can, two, and the thud of bodies hitting the ground.

A perfectly calm voice calls, "Moneypenny."

Eve steps into the doorway cautiously, gun still at the ready, just in case. "James."

James holds up his hands, left empty, gun held loosely in his right. "No need to shoot me again."

Eve lets the gun drop but doesn't bother to sheathe the knife in her other hand as she steps out of the room. "What are you doing here?"

"You weren't answering your texts." James looks over her shoulder, where she can feel the displacement of air when Graham steps out of the room they've been held in. "Who's this?"

Eve sighs. "Graham, James. James, Graham, boyfriend and object of the kidnapping."

James looks as if he doesn't know whether to be surprised or annoyed.

Eve doesn't give him a chance to decide. "Did you leave Dr. Swann in the South of France by herself?"

"Central London," James says. "Psychiatry conference."

"Ah," Eve says. "So you're here because you were at loose ends."

"Shouldn't we be getting out of here?" Graham asks.

Eve and James exchange a look - civilians - and James gestures in the direction he came from. "By all means."

They put Graham between them, and move carefully through what turns out to be a modified warehouse. They make it to an outside door, which is where it gets dicey.

James cracks the door open, gun pointing through it first, and slips through it before gesturing Graham and Eve through. They're in an alley, and there's a truck blocking one end of it. Eve walks backwards, gun pointed toward the truck, while James leads them to the open end of the alley.

They're almost clear, Graham just rounding the corner after James when a voice shouts, "Hey," as the man coming around the truck spots them just as Eve sees him.

Eve shoots, misses him but forces him back. She slips around the corner, covers James and Graham while they run for the car, takes her turn to run when they've reached it and James calls to her.

Then it's a dash across an open space while James lays down enough covering fire that the man in the alley can't get a bead on Eve.

They tumble into James's car, not one of the Aston Martins, thank goodness, but one with enough room for all three of them to fit comfortably even with Eve pushing Graham down below the windows.

"The glass is bulletproof," James says, although he also starts the car and takes them away as quickly as possible.

"Your car has bulletproof glass?" Eve asks.

"It's one of mine." Q's voice comes from the speakers. "Please don't let Bond leave this one at the bottom of a river."

"You!" Graham says.

Eve takes her attention from watching for pursuit for a moment to look at Graham. "You know each other?"

"He's the one trying to take my best data analyst."

"Good thing I brought her over today," Q says from the speakers. "She figured out where you were."

"We have company," Eve says, partly because their pursuers have caught up to them and partly to forestall what's sure to be a lengthy argument. The fact that Graham works for MI5 can be dealt with later, after they're safe.

"Q," James says, "tell me there's something I can use."

"Of course," Q says.

James is already scrolling through the car's menus. "Why are there so many bloody options?"

"Because it's a multi-purpose car."

Eve bats James's hands away and takes control.

James raises his eyebrows at her, even as he keeps them on the road while careening around a corner. "Getting away from the desk while I've been gone?"

"Just a bit." Eve waits until they straighten out and their pursuers come into view before firing one of the guns at the back of the car.

"She's very good at field testing," Q says.

"Perhaps not," Eve says. "We might need to simplify it a bit for the double ohs."

James makes a displeased noise.

"Double ohs," Graham says sharply.

Eve and James ignore him.

"Still one more in pursuit," Eve says.

"Please don't bring down the entire city," M says from the speakers.

Eve raises her eyebrows. "Is this an official mission?"

"Officially," M says, "MI6 has no knowledge of one of its retired agents who may have taken it upon himself to appropriate MI6 resources."

"Understood." Eve eyes their pursuers. "Think you can lose them?" she asks James.

James glances at the rearview mirror. "Perhaps."

"Hold on," Eve warns Graham.

They take several sharp corners at a high rate of speed, then merge into traffic that carries them along for a few blocks before James takes another corner, and another, then merges into everyday London traffic and slows down until they become just another black car moving through the city.

"No sight of them," Eve reports after a few minutes with no suspicious activity behind them.

"Bring them in, Bond," M says from the speakers.

James glances at Graham in the back seat. "Both of them?"

"Yes," M says. Then, not to them, "This sort of thing is exactly why we need full information sharing."

His voice moves away from the microphone.

"Anything you can do to get us there faster, Q?" James asks.

"Interfering in London traffic would be directly against regulations," Q's voice says.

The lights are green all the way back to MI6.

M and the new head of MI5 meet them, with Q arriving just behind them.

"You've returned it in one piece," Q says, paying more attention to the car than to any of them.

"I'd like my data analyst returned in the same condition as well," Graham says.

"She ought to be my data analyst," Q says. "Q Branch needs the best if we're to effectively outfit our agents."

M gestures Eve over, and she's only too glad to leave Q and Graham to their bickering. "Report."

"No idea who they were," Eve says. "We left some of them alive. They can be questioned if the backup team gets there in time. They definitely wanted Graham, not me."

M makes a considering noise.

"He was vetted," Eve says, quietly so it doesn't carry. "Did you know he was MI5?"

"No," M says. "Christ, what a mess. You'll have to talk to Psych, and do a full debrief."

Eve nods; she expected nothing less.

James strolls over to them and hands the car's key fob to Eve. "We're in town for three more days. Dinner?" He glances over his shoulder. "You can bring Graham if you must."

"Certainly," Eve says. "I'm looking forward to meeting Dr. Swann."

Tanner appears at her elbow. "I'm afraid you have to come with us now."

Eve allows herself to be led away into the building, and it's only much later that she's reunited with Graham in a corridor.

"You're MI5," she says.

"Yes," Graham confirms. "Head of defensive chemical research. You're MI6."

"Executive assistant to the head of MI6," Eve says. "Former field agent."

"I'm sure there's a story there."

"There is."

They look at each other for a moment, silent as someone in a suit walks past them.

"Are we going to have to engage in polite disagreements now as well?" Graham asks.

"I think I rather prefer it when we engage in impolite agreement," Eve says.

"Agreed," Graham says with a sigh tinged with relief.

They adjourn to Eve's - it's closer - where they agree with such impolite fervor that it nearly makes up for being kidnapped and having to endure the post-kidnapping debrief.

*

Two days later, Eve and Graham meet James and Dr. Swann for dinner.

Dr. Swann is as lovely as her surveillance photos suggest. "Madeleine, please."

Eve smiles warmly at her. "Eve. This is Graham."

"Ah," Madeleine says. "The cause of so much excitement earlier this week."

"Yes," Graham says. "Sorry to have disturbed your vacation."

"Oh, I like to keep my hand in," James says. "Much like Moneypenny does, I expect."

"Now, James, you know I can't tell you anything about what I do," Eve says with a smile.

"Are they always like this?" Graham asks Madeleine in a stage whisper.

"I have no idea," Madeleine says. She pins James with a look. "Are you?"

Eve and James raise their wine glasses with a shared smile.

Eve puts her glass down after sipping from it and turns to Madeleine. "How is the South of France? James never sends pictures."

"Lovely," Madeleine answers. "You should visit sometime."

"If they ever let us out of the country now," Graham says.

Eve puts her hand over his. "They will. You'll have to pass the new mandatory defense training first."

"Mandatory defense training?" Graham asks. "I haven't heard about that."

"Not yet," Eve says with a knowing smile. Sometimes it's good to be M's assistant.

"Do you think he'll pass?" James asks.

"Yes," Eve says firmly, "but you're retired. It's hardly your concern."

James smiles in a way that turns his face into creases. "Very well then."

Eve matches his smile, and then asks Madeleine about her conference.

It's a lovely dinner. James and Madeleine repeat their invitation to visit, and Eve promises she'll answer James's texts.

Eve and Graham go to his, where he proceeds to do any number of delightfully impolite things that result in her very vocal agreement. The evening is, on the whole, far more enjoyable than the polite disagreements of their jobs.


End file.
